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A soul that can be warm, welcoming, open to the unknown, comforting and supportive. A complex structure of things, plants, minerals, humans, ideas, animals, water and air.
20th century venue
A few people have remarked that some things still work in this latest version of the humanist institution of the 20th century, and that the fantastic institution could also be big. It's not black and white, there are things that can be kept: it's a big building in the center of the city. The entrance is not a wall with a door, but a large opening, a place where the circulation between the inside and outside is easy and inviting. Inside, the foyer is more than a waiting area, it's a place to stay, with a small library where people can come and sit for hours. There's a café to meet and talk, a cheap restaurant that is attractive to the people who reside in the area, as well as the workers in the building, the staff and the artists. It's a place where people can also come to warm up or to take a shower. So the entrance is an open, semi-public area. This place, on a very simple basis, is welcoming, and doesn't segregate on the basis of excellency. Here, the codes of culture are not overwhelming: there are not many things you need to know, there is no pressure to partake in academic discourse, neither is there a feeling that a certain financial standing is necessary to be in this place. On the contrary, it is designed to make it easy for people to access: the library shares novels, magazines and elaborate art books. It's not yet anything like art, but it is an entrance to art. It's a kind of social art: anyone is welcome to help at the bar, to choose the music, to cook, to serve in the restaurant or organize and improve the library. Hosting is important. The organizers host with care: these are not jobs, but rather participants in a collective. There are fees, but what matters is that lots of people can jump into these small jobs, that they can identify with the place, make friends and feel invited to propose ideas for improvement. It's about creating an open collectivity that is at the core of the institution and which sits at its entrance, namely the passage from the city to the venue.
A feminist institution
The level of hospitality goes hand in hand with the softness needed in the fantastic institution. It's a feminist institution, that is able to listen and is motherly as well. It is not a patriarchal, hierarchical structure that displays strong works. Rather, it operates more along the lines of the soft diffusion of information that happens in the forest through the miscelium, a mushroom that transports information so trees can have some sort of solidarity with each other. It's like an invisible network of solidarities. The institution being feminist doesn't mean that it has no power: it's a place to be courageous. Its strength lies not in its power over other people or things, its power lies in the potential of action. In the feminist institution one solves conflicts in other ways. Here, conflicts are long discussions, listening, sometimes unresolved. This goes hand in hand with redrawing the need to be in constant battle and competition, fostered by our society. In this place it's not about winning. During the symposium, we were reminded of Captain Mission, the pirate who created Libertaria on Madagascar with his fellow humans. Later he entered the forest to live with the lemurs, familiarising himself with this small ghostly animal, and de-humanizing himself in the process. In the fantastic institution, fights become the site of affirmation of a fantastic other, free of resentment: simply creation. The art and the art venue, is, or should be a place where it is possible to withdraw oneself from the need to compete, to appear and to control. It implies the deep experience that is art, that defines and changes society over time. It offers the opportunity to address the existence on Earth and the complexity of being in alternative ways. The fantastic institution hosts days that are dedicated to the body, during which various body activities, such as dance, yoga, qi qong and feldenkrais are practised. The phrase "decolonizing the institution" is important. It's about the decolonization of centralised power, from the will to control to the unfair and unjust appropriation of goods and resources. It is an attempt at unmaking the colonies that belong to the dominant patriarch, the patriarch who is also very much welcome to decolonize himself.
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